A conversation with Adhya Singh Parmar, Marketing Manager at Godrej & Boyce, who moved from psychology and HR to leading a student music collective, to marketing at Godrej, and who learned the most from her grandmother without her grandmother ever saying it directly 

Adhya Singh Parmar is Marketing Manager at Interio by Godrej, Godrej & Boyce. She studied psychology. She led a student-run music collective called House of Mauj that taught her more about leadership than anything she studied formally. She has worked in HR and community building. She is new to marketing and already drawing on every previous version of herself to do it. 

Her answers are honest in the way early-career conversations rarely are. She is not performing sorted. She is actually figuring it out and willing to say so. 

A Work in Progress, and Okay With That 

Who is Adhya right now, across the different lives you are living? 

She is in a season of becoming, and she says that feels both exciting and unsettling. She is a little confused, a little chaotic, a little emotional. She does not have everything figured out, and she is not pretending to anymore. What has stayed constant is her belief in taking life one day at a time. 

At work, she is still growing into her role, absorbing as much as she can. Personally, she is figuring out balance: managing finances better, making time for people she loves, being more intentional with her hours. Socially, she enjoys building communities and meeting people, but has also started appreciating quieter moments and protecting her own space. 

Family is the hardest part. She lives in Mumbai, away from home. Mumbai has been her city for her bachelor’s, her MBA, and now her career. But there is always a part that misses the comfort of home. Independence is rewarding, she says, but it comes with moments of loneliness. Sometimes you celebrate your wins over a phone call instead of around the dinner table. 

She is also becoming kinder to herself. For a long time, she felt like she needed all the answers before taking the next step. Now she is learning that growth often looks like showing up despite the uncertainty. 

“I’m learning that growth often looks like showing up despite the uncertainty, asking questions, making mistakes, and trusting that you’ll figure things out along the way.” 

The ‘season of becoming’ framing is more precise than it sounds. It is not about being in transition between two fixed states. It is about recognising that the becoming is the state, and that being okay in it is its own kind of maturity. 

Her Grandmother Taught Her Without Ever Saying It Directly 

Was there a moment when you realised your career did not have to follow a straight line, and how did that change the way you approached your choices? 

Her career has never really followed a straight line, and she has finally made peace with that. She has moved between different roles and experiences because she genuinely cannot do something if her heart is not in it. Work, for her, is about being curious enough to explore and honest enough to admit when something does not feel like the right fit. 

A lot of that mindset comes from her grandmother: the first woman in her family to step outside conventional expectations, who dedicated her life to the upliftment of women from underprivileged communities. Growing up, Adhya watched her lead with conviction and purpose. Her grandmother never said it directly, but she taught her that it is okay to choose a path because it aligns with your values, even if it looks different from everyone else’s. 

Her background in psychology and HR taught her empathy and how to understand people. Leading House of Mauj, the student-run music collective, taught her how to lead creative people, navigate different personalities, build communities, manage sponsors and budgets, handle crises, and bring an idea to life from scratch. It was one of the first places where she realised leadership is not about having all the answers. It is about creating an environment where everyone can do their best work. Now in marketing, she draws from all of those experiences almost every day. 

She had her share of doubts, questioned her choices, and worried about falling behind people whose journeys looked more linear. Over time, she realised that comparing timelines only takes away from your own. 

“Comparing timelines only takes away from your own. I started focusing on making the most of wherever I was, and that’s what led me somewhere that actually felt right.” 

The grandmother detail earns everything that follows. The lesson about choosing your own path did not come from a podcast or a career counsellor. It came from watching a woman in her own family live it. That is a different kind of learning, and it sticks differently. 

The Offer Did Not Make Her Worthy. It Just Helped Her See What Was Already True. 

Have you ever felt like you had to prove yourself before you felt you truly belonged in a room? 

Absolutely. And she thinks more people feel this than they are willing to admit. 

For her, it was during her MBA, especially around final placements. There was an unspoken pressure where it felt like everyone had a plan, an offer, or knew exactly where they were headed. She was carrying a lot of uncertainty about her own career. She found herself avoiding certain conversations and networking events because she did not want to answer the inevitable question: so, what is next for you? It was not that she did not enjoy meeting people. She just felt like she needed an achievement or a title before she had the confidence to walk into those rooms. 

Getting placed at Godrej & Boyce gave her confidence. But what she has realised since then is that the offer was not what made her worthy of being there. It simply gave her the reassurance to see what was already true: she had worked hard, she had something meaningful to contribute, and she did not need to have every answer to deserve a seat at the table. 

“The offer wasn’t what made me worthy of being there. It simply gave me the reassurance to see what was already true.” 

This is the most accurate account of how imposter syndrome actually works: it does not go away when you get the thing. It reveals that it was never actually about the thing. The worthiness was there before the offer. The offer just made it visible. 

Becoming Comfortable With Change. Without Noticing. 

What part of yourself has become stronger over the last few years, almost without you noticing? 

Becoming more comfortable with the idea of change. She did not consciously work on it. But looking back, almost every phase of her life has been different from the one before it. Moving away from home, exploring different career paths, taking on leadership roles, completing her MBA, navigating corporate life. None of it followed a straight line. 

Earlier, change felt intimidating because it came with so many unknowns. Today, she still gets nervous and still overthinks big decisions. But she has become much more accepting of the fact that growth often comes from stepping into unfamiliar territory. She did not notice the shift while it was happening. It was only when she paused to look back that she realised she had stopped trying to control every outcome. 

Becoming comfortable with change has not made life any less uncertain. But it has made her a lot more open to the opportunities that uncertainty can bring. 

“Becoming comfortable with change hasn’t made life less uncertain. But it has made me a lot more open to the opportunities that uncertainty can bring.” 

The phrase ‘almost without noticing’ is the key to this answer. The strongest growth tends to be the kind you do not see happening. You only recognise it when you look back and compare who you were to who you are now, and realise the distance is larger than you thought. 

The Glamorous Moments Are Real. They Are Built on a Lot of Groundwork. 

What is one thing about the marketing industry that people glamorize too much from the outside? 

The flashy side: the campaigns, the launches, the social media moments. What goes unseen are the hours spent understanding consumer behaviour, analysing data, visiting markets, speaking to customers, aligning with different teams, and refining ideas over and over again. The glamorous moments are real. They are built on a lot of groundwork. 

“The glamorous moments are real. But they’re built on a lot of groundwork that no one sees.” 

She says this as someone who is new enough to marketing to still remember what it looked like from the outside, and recent enough inside it to already know the ratio. That is a specific vantage point that does not last long. The answer is more honest for it. 

Marketing at Its Best Goes Beyond Selling 

What kind of work gives you the deepest sense of meaning or excitement, the kind that reminds you why you chose this field in the first place? 

The moment when she sees her work make a tangible difference in someone’s life, no matter how small. A product that makes someone’s home more functional. An experience that makes a customer feel understood. A campaign that genuinely resonates. Marketing, for her, is at its best when it goes beyond selling and starts solving real problems or creating meaningful experiences. 

She comes from a background in psychology and has always been fascinated by people: what influences their decisions, what they value, what makes them feel connected to a brand. Marketing gives her the opportunity to combine that curiosity with creativity and business. The greatest satisfaction is knowing that something she worked on was not just seen, but genuinely useful, memorable, or made someone’s life a little better. 

“Marketing is at its best when it goes beyond selling and starts solving real problems or creating meaningful experiences.” 

The psychology background earns this answer. She is not saying customers matter because the brief says so. She is saying people have always been the interesting thing to her, and marketing is just the professional version of the same curiosity she has had for years. 

Live a Little. 

If you could write one reminder for your younger self at the beginning of her career, what would it say? 

Live a little. Stop waiting until you feel ready, because that moment rarely comes. 

Do that internship. Apply for that opportunity. Take on responsibilities that scare you. Put yourself in rooms where you do not know everything. For a long time, she was so worried about making the wrong decision or not being good enough that she sometimes let fear make choices for her. Looking back, every experience she almost talked herself out of ended up teaching her something valuable, whether it went perfectly or not. 

The reminder is simple: live a little. Be curious. Take the leap. Trust yourself enough to try, and do not let the fear of failing stop you from experiencing things that could change your life. Some of the best opportunities come from saying yes before you feel completely ready. 

“Live a little. Some of your best opportunities will come from saying yes before you feel completely ready.” 

She is early enough in her career that this is not advice from the distance of decades. It is advice from someone who just lived through the anxiety she is describing. That makes it land differently than the same words from someone who has had twenty years to forget what the fear felt like. 

A Note From Decoding Draupadi 

What stayed with us is the grandmother. Not as a backstory or a warm detail, but as the actual explanation for why Adhya thinks the way she does about non-linear paths. Her grandmother was the first woman in the family to step outside conventional expectations. Adhya watched that growing up and never forgot the lesson. It did not come with commentary. It came with example. 

We also want to note: she is two months into her role at Godrej. She answered every question with a level of self-awareness that usually takes much longer to develop. That is not something you perform. It is something you either have or you do not. 

If this felt like someone you know, share it with her. 

 Live a little. Some of your best opportunities will come from saying yes before you feel completely ready. More at @decodingdraupadi. 

Adhya Singh Parmar is Marketing Manager at Godrej & Boyce. This interview was conducted as part of the Decoding Draupadi Brand Manager Series.